


i can't sleep a wink these nights

by dirkcorgly (varlovian)



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-03 00:23:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10231385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/varlovian/pseuds/dirkcorgly
Summary: “I’m not psychic,” he’d said to Todd, who hadn't believed him even though he'd been telling the truth. “But I am… something.”Dirk doesn't knowwhathe is.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Crywolf's song [Slow Burn](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDp1h_fO5nc).

His chest heaves, breath coming out in short, sharp pants. His toes curl, muscles tight.

Creation shifts in loose, metallic coils around him, an incandescent rope leading him from places unknown to places more unknown. Each day he follows it blindly, the light it exudes so bright it’s searing, distorting the path ahead.

It’s important, Dirk knows, vitally so, though he has no idea what _it_ is, let alone what it wants from him. His legs walk of their own accord, towards that far-off goal of which he has seen but a fleeting glimpse; people and places and objects surge around him, transient. There and then gone.

Dirk knows things. He has answers, even as he doesn't know  _the_ answer.

Sometimes— _often_ —he doesn’t know anything at all, and that too is significant. That too is part of the plan.

But what is the plan, and will it ever cease? Or will he just continue to move from place to place, solving other’s problems but never his own?

Is he destined for this long game, knowing neither rules nor players, where life is a slog through endless bouts of chaos and brief intermissions of calm, just long enough for Dirk to dig through, claw to the surface of becoming human, up and into the world he so blindly wanders, before the chaos drags him down again in a hurricane of sound and sight, as terrifying and maddening and  _exciting_ as it was when last he left—for it is _him_ leaving _it_ , though he hasn’t the faintest clue how he does it, only that he does and it never, ever lasts.

Sometimes— _often_ —he wonders why he persists, why he bothers to choose his moves when life has already decided on the outcome.

In those sad and silent moments, still prevalent even now, when Dirk is entirely alone in form and thought, staring up at the patchwork ceiling of his too-small apartment from his too-small bed, in  _those_ moments, is when it happens. The rope around his wrists gives a little, allowing him to see past the light to what lies beyond—

_The molten heart of the universe._

—and the sight never fails to unnerve him, manifesting as a dull ache in his bones and on his skin, like staring into the sun for too long, heat tattooed on the inside of his eyelids like a brand as he shuts them, dizzy and sick from the sight of those great loping coils ebbing in a stream around him, glittering like gold, radiant. It strikes a chord deep inside, the knowledge of that light and what it is (creation in its true form) and, more importantly, what it means to him (validation).

It's a message, one written to him in a thousand different ways over the past thirty years, culminating into a single request not to give up, and damn it all if the sight doesn't fill him with something even now, a restless curl in his chest, yearning.

It isn't hope, not really. Dirk's hope is reserved for people, for Todds and Farahs and Amandas. The universe is not one of those people. The universe is rope around his wrists, hot and constricting. The universe is loneliness and terror, the empty night to Dirk's child-like cry for help.

No, not hope.

 _Faith,_ he thinks suddenly, fingers splayed across his chest, thick with the threads of a rope only he can see.  _P_ _erseverance and faith_ _._

One day, the universe will ask too much of him. He knows it, _feels_ it. But not tonight. Tonight, the sight of it is enough; the realization that _it's_ stuck with _him_ the same way he's stuck with it, that they need each other for whatever unfathomable reason that might be, is enough.

His chest heaves, breath coming out in short, sharp pants. His toes curl, muscles tight.

Creation shifts in loose, metallic coils around him, an incandescent rope leading him from places unknown to places more unknown.

Dirk follows.


End file.
